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SXSW scene report: South Congress
The afternoon of SXSW Wednesday used to feel like the calm before the storm on South Congress. This year, it seemed more like the first small wave of an impending tsunami. Around 1 p.m., the sidewalks weren’t yet busier than a normal Saturday, and there wasn’t much of a wait at Hey Cupcake! or any of the other vendors in the church parking lot destined to one day, after the recession, become a really chi-chi hotel. A couple of hippie chicks sat on the church lawn, one yapping on her cell phone while the other constructed what looked like an arugula and avocado salad in a rectangular plastic grocery-store lettuce box. A Rihanna wannabe with a half-cockatoo hairdo half-stomped, half-wobbled by in her skin-tight black jeans and black lace-up stiletto boots, perhaps heading to CVS to buy a pair of flip-flops. A woman in a red minidress and black tights ran across South Congress, her SXSW badge flapping in her face.
The sidewalk tables at Guero’s were full, but diners still had a leisurely air, and the sidewalk was still passable. The action, for the moment, was down in the parking lot of the Hotel San Jose, where I had apparently just missed the Trishas, but ran into neighbors who had enjoyed them greatly. Easily half the crowd seemed to be people-watching locals, some with babies and dogs, enjoying the free music and the spectacle, including a guy in a Christian Death T-shirt who didn’t know you’re not supposed to tuck your mom jeans into your new cowboy boots, and a woman with an indefinable accent dangling a cigarette with distinctly European disdain. Ethan Azarian’s somewhat tuneless mope-folk didn’t mesmerize many of the adults, who were busy shopping the vintage clothing booths, working on their iBooks at the tables in the back or socializing. However, one tiny girl in pink-and-brown polka dot leggings started gyrating next to the soundboard, waggling her hips as though dancing to the rhythm of a Beyonce song in her head, but making avant-garde shapes with her arms.
Over at the Continental Club, there were still seats to be had, although Greensboro, N.C.’s Holy Ghost Tent Revival captivated the small crowd. They ended their set with a ferocious cover of the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down,” notable not only for including banjo and trombone in the arrangement, but also for the intensity of the vocal harmonies.
By 3 p.m., the oak garden at Guero’s was filling up with margarita drinkers and people checking out Elizabeth McQueen, who actually got some of them to shout along at the appropriate junctures on a cover of Chuck Berry’s “30 Days.” Negotiating the sidewalks was already becoming more difficult, with badge people heading purposefully north, and fliers posted on any spare pole gave notice of the explosion of shows starting Thursday in the parking lot of just about any establishment with a South Congress address, with the possible exception of the tax accountant.
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